


Broken Pieces

by giraffeofpaper



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: Death, Family, Gen, Hospitals, Sad, pre-AD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2013-09-23
Packaged: 2017-12-27 09:36:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/977238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giraffeofpaper/pseuds/giraffeofpaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Young George Michael is in the hospital by his mother's side, trying to figure out how to cope with what is happening. </p><p>Detailed warnings and details regarding contents in opening notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> I worked in Palliative Care this summer with cancer patients, so issues like this are dear to my heart. I have worked with the families of dying patients, as well as with the patients themselves as they go through different stages of life (as, dying is still a living process - we must not speak of the ill as if they are already gone). This fic is an accurate description to everything I have experienced, and it is not a happy story. If you have a hard time coping with death or loss I will not be offended if you choose to pass on this. I just felt I had to write it. 
> 
> I hope I've captured the tone and seriousness of a situation like this accurately and sensitively. If you've been in a situation of this sort and disagree with anything I have written, please do not hesitate to let me know <3
> 
> and, thanks to singingtomysoul for some help :)

George Michael is 12. No twelve-year-old boy likes the hospital, and George Michael likes it less than normal. The hospital is an unpleasant place, and even more unpleasant is the reason he's there. It smells of chemically-clean, and the hallways feel dark, even though they are painted a crisp white. He hates it. He feels like everything should be black because that's about how happy he feels. There are weird noises and beeps and whirrs, and most of all, somehow beneath the mechanics, a haunting silence. A silence that sounds like all the life has been taken from the place. 

There's life coming from some rooms. He hears the sound of a guitar coming from a bed down the hall, and a lady singing. She sings alright, he supposes. But, it doesn't seem right, that in this place where everything is so sad, that she should be singing a happy tune. Happy tunes belonged in happy places, not in places like _this_. Not in a place where his mother was being taken from him.

"Mom?" he whispers, looking at his mothers tired face. Her skin is dryer than he remembered. She always used to be so soft when she held him in her arms, cuddled him closely, loved him. Now she looks dry, and sick, and like her skin isn't even human anymore. There are all these tubes too. Lots of tubes. He doesn't remember the last time she ate something. He looks down at the sandwich sitting next to him, barely touched. It was his sandwich, that his father brought him from the cafeteria. He doesn't want the sandwich. He isn't hungry. He wishes his mother could eat some of it. Maybe then she’d stop looking so weak.

Tracey is in the bed, but George Michael feels alone in the room. He doesn't know where is father is. He's probably down the hall somewhere. He's been spending a lot of time in the family room down the way, holding pieces to a puzzle, that never seems to get any closer to completion. It's like each piece, despite matching another, somewhere, somehow, doesn't seem to fit. Like the tabs have been pulled off, and the shapes been moved, so even when pieces seem right, they're not. Once when George Michael went in to check on his father, one of the chairs was flipped over, and the magazines were dumped on the floor, like someone had thrown them in a rage. Michael had been sitting motionless at the puzzle table, however, fist clenched around a piece that just didn't seem right. 

George Michael doesn't like the family room. The colours seem too bright, and the energy seems too amicable for a place like the hospital. He doesn't really like sitting with his mother either, because it seems like it has been days since she's really been who she used to be. That morning she'd opened her eyes and looked right at him, and he'd smiled, and told her about the A he'd gotten on his math test. It had been three months ago; he had bombed the last four tests, sick with worry, but he just wanted to tell her something that would make her proud. She'd just smiled, a sad, weak smile, and closed her eyes again, murmuring words he could barely make out. Her quick wit, her happy laugh, her soft touch. She was always the one to hug him. His father was never much for physical contact. 

He wants a hug.

He sits there for a minute, then reaches out, and touches his mother's hand. The nurses told him he could. They said that she might know he's touching her, even if she's sleeping, or maybe more than just sleeping. That the touch might be comforting.

Her skin feels like paper. He pulls back, and then regrets it, hoping she doesn't know that he recoiled from her foreign skin. He doesn't want her to think he doesn't love her, because he does. A lot. He whispers it: "I love you, Mom." The nurses said she might be able to hear him too, and he remembers how sometimes his alarm clock shows up in his dreams, so he hopes his mother hears it. Maybe that’s why the lady is playing music down the hall. Maybe even though the person feels really sick, maybe she can hear something happy in her sleep. He wants his mom to hear something happy too. He whispers a little louder. “Mom? If you can hear me, I’m really sorry you’re...you’re not doing well. I...wish you were better.” That wasn’t as happy as he expected, but he can’t muster much more.

Why is his face wet? He hasn’t showered in....days. The nurses say it’s important to go home, to find some normalcy, at least, that’s what they tell his father, but they keep staying there. He’s been sleeping on a chair in his mother’s room. He doesn’t know where his father’s been sleeping, _if_ he’s been sleeping.

He sits there, just considering life, and lack there of, when in walks a disheveled figure. It’s his father. It looks like he hasn’t showered in days either, which George Michael suspects is the truth, because as far as he knows, he hasn’t gone home. He’s paced the halls a bit, stopped by the room, gotten this dark, dark look on his face, and sometimes spoke in hushed tones to the nurses and doctor. The news never seems good. He spends most of his time in that room though, pouring over a puzzle that never gets fixed. Sometimes George Michael thinks he senses his father in the room, sitting close to his mother, holding her horrible, death-filled hand, while he lies in the chair trying to sleep. Every time he closes his eyes he feels the world closing in around him more than it is already, so he doesn’t spend much time really sleeping, just in that weird limbo, between awake and asleep, where you don’t really get much rest. He imagines his mother is there too. She never looks more rested, even though she sleeps almost every hour of the day now.

“Hey pal,” his father says, barely looking at him.

  
“Hi Dad,” he responds. It feels weird calling this man Dad now. He doesn’t seem the same either. Like he’s just a shell of the man he once was. He has only asked George Michael to play catch once since his mother was admitted to the hospital, weeks ago, and George Michael said yes, out of pity. He wants to see his father smile - his father used to smile a lot! But not anymore. “How’s the puzzle going?” Is that making conversation? George Michael spends so much time in silence now, that he barely remembers. The days feel like weeks, years, but they still aren’t long enough, not enough time with his mother. 

“It’s fine. It’s going fine.” It wasn’t. They both knew that. Nothing was going fine. The past few months had been the very opposite of fine. His father looks at Tracey. The dark look on his face grows darker. “Actually, George Michael, you’re getting older, so I’m going to be honest with you. It’s not going. Everything is stuck in fucking static, and I’m so done with it. I just.. I can’t deal with this. I’m... so sorry I haven’t been around. It’s just, hard, you know?”

George Michael knows. He doesn’t say anything back, just kind of looks past his father, his eyes shining in agreement. 

They two men are there in silence for a moment, Michael standing like the broken man he is, and George Michael sitting slumped in the hospital chair. George Michael swallows heavily, and glances at his mother. Is she even his mother anymore?

Michael speaks, quietly, barely audibly. “George Michael, this isn’t going to be easy.” 

George Michael doesn’t respond, but he hears his father. It hasn’t been easy, and it’s not going to get easier.

“You know what I always said is the most important thing? The thing that, neither of us are getting enough of right now?” Michael chokes up a little. George Michael can’t look at him. 

“I’m...I’m sorry I didn’t finish my sandwich...I’m just...not..hu...” He swallows, blinks back tears. There’s a pause. “I’m not hungry.”

“I.. I...didn’t mean lunch... although technically breakfast is the most important meal of the --...” He stops, struggling to get the words out. He steps closer to George Michael. His words, soft before, now almost disappear into the beeps and and buzzing of the hospital. But George Michael hears him. “I mean, family. We, we need to hold onto each other.” 

George Michael looks up for a moment. And then back down. Looking at his dad makes everything more real. Especially since his dad’s face is streaked with a dampness that he’s barely seen before. His father never cries. Not in front of him. He’s heard his breath catch in his throat before, seen him wipe his eyes quickly, hoping no one would notice, and he’s seen the red puffiness that’s a tell-tale sign. He remembers that his father had let a tear slip out once, just once, when they’d gotten the news that the cancer was terminal. But this time, there are more, and as he allows himself to look up once again, he sees that they are piling up, and his heart feels tight and everything is hot and warm and his eyes are so damp..

“C’mere, pal,” his father says. The way he says it has George Michael rising to his feet, and wrapping his arms around his father in an instant. There’s so much sadness and hurt, but somehow comfort in there - comfort that someone might understand just how much everything hurts. His arms are wrapped tightly around. His father is holding him tight, and it’s the first fatherly hug he’s remembered in ages. And here, the tears are free to flow, for both father and son.

Neither tries to pretend it’s going to be okay. Neither tries to make the situation lighter, easier, less real. How could they? They just hold each other, and in that moment, they are together in their grief, and even though they are losing something so big, they believe, at least a little bit, that they might make it through, that despite the fact that they are weeping and soaking through each others’ shirts, and the whole world is filled with sadness, that they might just survive past this day.

“We’re family, and we have to stick together,” Michael says, muffled. “It’s just us now pal. We have to stick together. That’s what family does."

They’re losing a big part of their family, any day now. It hurts that they can’t stick together. In truth, they’ve lost her already, for even though her soul and memories are still there, she can’t be who she is anymore. She’s too drugged, too ill.  

Then George Michael remembers something. “What about...everyone else? Can we...can we talk to Gangee and Pop-pop more, and Uncle Gob and Uncle Buster and Aunt Lindsay? Because, I...I don’t know if I’m strong enough to hold you up through this. And, we need family. I...I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Michael frowns. “But George Michael, we can hold each other up. We don’t need them. They’ve never been there. Where are they _now_? It’s just us, pal. Just us.” 

“I don’t know,” George Michael says, losing hope for a moment. “I just thought...I thought it might be nice.”

His father thinks for a moment, a long moment. He waits so long that George Michael wonders if he’s forgotten the question, but finally he answers, slowly and quietly. “Would that help you?”

George Michael doesn’t know for sure. “Maybe.” He hopes so. Past his father’s shoulder, he can see his mother lying there, and he hugs his father tighter, desperate for love. “I’m...I’m going to miss her so much.” 

“Me too pal.” There’s silence, and the world stands still for a moment. “Me too.”


End file.
